Settling - July 30 2021

Settling

July 30 2021

The thing that happens with age

is mostly gravity.

Sagging skin

backs shrinking

hair falling out.

This is what young people see,

who are immortal

and see the old as aliens

who were always this way

and somehow dropped from the ether.

But they miss the settling;

the levelling out of the peaks and the lows,

a contented sense

of groundedness, and self.

Even though there is less time left,

you no longer feel the urgency

of life and death and consequence

you once attached to minor annoyances.

Gratitude comes more easily,

and the small things

seem disproportionately good.

And when they ask what makes you happy

it isn't career, wealth, or status.

It's the people you know and have known,

family, and relationships.

That you're richer than you thought you were

and are thankful for it.

And for those not so fortunate, poorer;

that all the work they did to get here

wasn't worth it after all.

These things come so easily these days, it makes me wonder if they're any good. But I think the thing is that I've found my voice. And have also developed my ear, so that as I put the words down I can almost immediately tell if they work or not. Also, I think that by writing so much, it's become a lot easier not to over write – to write too much.

At one point, I thought I was going to run out of ideas. Not inspiration, necessarily – that's asking a lot – but at least something to get me started. But I find that my reading serves up all kinds of material, so that even someone who leads a life as uneventful, routinized, and thin as mine can find something promising! (Today, it was Garrison Keillor's latest piece.)

Of course, I'm not nearly as philosophical or successful at life as this makes me appear. Not a bit. But who says that because I wrote it it's autobiography? By and large, though, it's been found that if you plot happiness through the arc of a life, you get a “U” shaped curve: bottoming out sometime in midlife, and then increasing with age. So despite the infirmities and indignities, the more imminent prospect of death, and the loss of youthful vitality, old people are happier than they look!